of Juliet, the Magazine volume 3, part 1

of Juliet, the Magazine winter 2020

unless you find these things impossible

of Juliet, the Magazine . vol. 3 pt. 1 . winter 2020

unless you find these things impossible

a little piece of something bigger

of Juliet, the Magazine is: Joshua Lewin Editor at Large Katie Rosengren Managing Editor Samantha Mangino Features & Special Projects Maddie Trainor Design & Illustration Cover art is by Maddie Trainor.

Interior paintings are by Hannah Riffe.

Produced and managed by the staff of the award winning restaurant, of Juliet, the Magazine is not only a fulfilling creative project, founded on Juliet’s characteristic excellence in craft, but also an experiment in developing economically viable support structure in the arts.

Contributors and staff share in the profit of the project.

Like the restaurant itself, supporting this endeavor not only provides a unique and fulfilling experience for fans and readers, but an opportunity to develop skills and be paid for them, for those involved in the creation.

Free to read online since 2019, the Magazine is supported through optional subscriptions, accepted on a pay what you can basis; learn more online, at of Juliet.com.

Your support will go directly to sustaining our minimal expenses, 80% of revenue collected above that is returned right to our contributors. Revenue retained by the company is reinvested in new projects in media, and new opportunities for our team.

Prospect Tower Observation is the self-produced, diy friendly, media tentacle of the hospitality group behind some of the Boston area’s most highly acclaimed, and highly independent, restaurants, Juliet, and Peregrine,

by Joshua Lewin and Katrina Jazayeri.

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Contributors Andrew Anderson is a digital marketer and photographer. A Somerville resident for the past two years, with prior stops in Portland, ME and Worcester, MA, Andrew has always been drawn to the mystery of the photographic medium and enjoys finding the beauty in the mundane through the lens of a camera. He enjoys short walks on the beach and long walks in the mall. You can follow his work on Instagram @andrrw.

Ariel Knoebel is a writer, food historian, and sometimes illustrator when she is not helping lead the front of house team at Juliet. In her time off, she is likely wandering in the woods with and a hot beverage in hand and her dog Whiskey underfoot, or cooking and watching bad TV with friends. She was raised to never leave the house without a book, and is always open to recommendations.

For more of her work, visit sipandspoonful.com.

Matthew Bullock is Peregrine’s executive sous chef; a curious cook and diligent student of culinary history and technique.

Matthew’s self professed favorite cuisines include underrepresented American traditions; among his favorite contributions to professional cooking is giving them their due, in presentations worthy of being noticed. Follow him on Instagram @mtthwbullock.

Meredith Leigh is an author, butcher, farmer, and cook who lives in Asheville, NC. A lifelong poet and student of fair food systems, she writes, teaches, and consults internationally, mostly focusing on livestock and meat as a lens for examining everything about the way we cook, eat, and think.

Will Deeks is a Boston-based cook, writer, and musician. After working in a number of kitchens throughout the city, Will has settled in as assistant culinary director of Juliet + company. Whether he is at the stove there, or occasionally touring the country with various bands, he works to provide insight to the human experience through hospitality and art.

Shan James is a half-Chinese New Zealander based in New England, via Hong Kong, Auckland, London, Arnhem, and Chicago. She is half of Providence-based design studio Practise, working with cultural clients across the world, and cooking and developing recipes in her free time. See what’s cooking @ whereveryoucook.

while sharing a bottle of wine and a big pot of pasta. For info on past and upcoming artistic pursuits, feel free to visit her website hannahriffe. com, or check out her artistic instagram @little.mountain.crafts.

Dina Samimi is a Tunisian American writer, cook, and hobbyist. She reads avidly, eats inquisitively, and travels intrepidly.

Her current pursuits include weekly baking projects, watercolor and ink painting, as well as a daily yoga and meditation practice. She lives in Boston with her husband and their pug, Hamilton (Hammy for short).

Samantha Mangino is a writer and third-generation restaurant professional. Born in Yarmouth, Maine, she grew up with a restaurant named after her and parents who helped to develop her disdain for the kid’s menu. She takes her martinis with gin and olives and her chips with extra dip.

Janaka Stucky is a mystic poet, performer, and founding editor of the awardwinning press Black Ocean. He is a two-time National Haiku Champion, and is the author of four poetry collections including Ascend Ascend (Third Man Records & Books). His writing has appeared in a variety of publications such as The Huffington Post and Poetry Foundation—and has been profiled in The Believer, Vice, and BOMB Magazine. He incorporates esoteric & occult influences to develop a trance poetics, which he has taught or performed in over 60 cities around the world. You can learn more about him and his work at janakastucky.com and @janaka_stucky.

Hannah Riffe is a Boston-based theatre and visual artist, whose passion for community and creativity has always manifested in the (very alike, often separated) realms of food and art-making. She presently splits her time between freelance artistic work, and serving with the team at Juliet. She is of the belief that life couldn’t get much better than a room full of people reading a play

Maddie Trainor is an artist and storyteller. She is putting her BFA in Graphic Design to good use as a server at Juliet, where you can find her perfecting her latte art. She is from South Carolina, Georgia, Missouri, Alabama, and, most recently, Tennessee. She currently resides in Somerville, MA with her cat Winona (@ winonadiamond) and her ever expanding plant collection.

Joshua Lewin is the editor-at-large at of Juliet and one of the co-owners of restaurants Juliet and Peregrine.

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in this issue

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6 Curtain Notes Joshua Lewin 7 Artist’s Statement Hannah Riffe

amuse 10 Make a Mess Ariel Knoebel 11 I Am (Part 1 of 3) Joshua Lewin 12 How To: Bon Vivant (2) Dina Samimi

hors d’oeuvre 16 The Story of Hemings and Hercules Matthew Bullock 17 We Have Entered a Parallel Universe Joshua Lewin 18 The Lemon in Copenhagen Meredith Leigh 20 Grief, Quarantined Maddie Trainor 23 Been There Before Joshua Lewin 24 An Introvert’s Dream Samantha Mangino 25 Extrovert, Turned In Ariel Knoebel 26 From Crete We Flew to Freedom Janaka Stucky

entrée 30 Photo Essay Andrew Anderson 42 Rumi Spice: Interview with Kimberly Jung Will Deeks

dessert 48 A Two Way Street: The Reciprocity of Education Joshua Lewin 50 Chestnut Dessert Soup Shan James

mignardise 54 Call for Submissions Love Letters 55 Map to St. Valentine Ariel Knoebel

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Curtain Notes Joshua Lewin Welcome to our third year of trying something new.

So far, we’ve existed in a multitude of forms. First, as a more standard production program, like at the theater, taking you behind the scenes in all the most direct ways for menu developments at our first restaurant, Juliet.

Then, as a sort of pretend travel magazine, imagining and reimagining the places from where we draw inspiration for those menus. And now we are becoming something else, yet again.

time of crisis. Today, we are supporting the continued development of the careers of 50 as best we can, but ultimately we will be limited.

In our third year of publication we are digging our roots deeper in the midst of a global pandemic. We have a selection of writing and art to share with you this time around that was created mostly during the time of that crisis. While we dig deeply, we are letting our identity float up and away, as we do our best to transcend the fear of the moment to evolve closer to something that will represent what we will be from now on. A collective, collaborative, unfettered by preconceptions, publication of the moment. As the moments change, so will we.

In terms of keeping people at work, we see forever value in investing time- and money for as long as we can afford it- in people now. Our company revenues have been reduced to single digit percentages of what they were prior to the corona virus outbreak, but as a business, and a group of businesses, we do have the opportunity to engage with people, now. Our training will be stronger, our programs better, our people more engaged on the other side of this. We need the government to invest in this process, so that there is an other side of this to be a part of. This is an investment that will pay off.

The restaurant industry, which represents the primary operations that animate this work, is experiencing particular upheaval in adjusting to this new temporary reality. Almost an entire industry is out of work. Our operations are doing everything we can to keep people employed, engaged, and “at work,” even though the work itself has completely gone away. We don’t know how long we can sustain this, but we are committed to doing so for as long as possible. We’ll see.

Our industry was ill prepared for such an interruption, but we, personally, were a little better prepared than some others. Not much. But a little. I’ll try to tell you that story another day. Spoiler: it’s all about people.

Regardless of our individual preparations, COVID-19 has interrupted millions of lives in the restaurant industry alone, and it has completely changed ours. It has exposed a need for better preparedness to support the work of everyone in the American economy in the 6

We need support, and we need relief. In return for it, we will be strong and ready to return to operations once it is safe to do so, employing millions of workers in need…and reducing the long term strain on government programs in the near future.

In the meantime, we’ll continue to adjust our programs, and this little company, our smallest and most independent part of the operation, publishing and media, will be getting a continual upgrade. We have introduced television programming, both instructive and entertainment focused, and are hard at work on new print work. There have been 10,000 changes. I’d be lying if I said we weren’t concerned. We are concerned and then some. But we work. And we go on.

Unless you find these things impossible, Joshua Lewin

Cook and storyteller; craft as immersive performance.

Aspiring to something… I almost know what at Juliet + Company JulietAndCompany.net . of Juliet.com Find us on Instagram @ofjuliet_mediaverse

Artist’s Statement Hannah Rif fe I don’t like painting real things anymore.

When I go for a hike, I spend the whole time looking at the colors of the shifting landscape. I like beaches in winter because of the way the wetlands turn orange in the cold, against the grey and green of the sky and sea.

I like the way it all washes together, how the colors blend in my memory and it shifts my whole mood before getting back in the car to drive home.

When I eat an amazing plate of pasta, I don’t remember it for the way the mussels tasted separately from the bite of the red sauce— I remember it for the way everything came together, blended in my mouth and warmed me from the inside out. It’s always a wash at the end of the evening.

So recently I’m seeing what it’s like to paint that — the end of the evening, the end of the hike, the impression afterwards. How do you explain that story with nothing but color?

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amuse

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amuse how-to’s & poems

Make a Mess Ariel Knoebel To make good pasta, as with so many things, you cannot be successful without making a little bit of a mess. Turn your flour out onto the countertop, exactly the way you’ve been taught not to do things. Take up space in your tiny apartment kitchen. Well, I shouldn’t assume — maybe your kitchen is sprawling with counter space to spare, but in my cramped galley with bowed countertops and bad lighting, taking up so much space is a luxury. I have to shimmy the toaster and rearrange coffee canisters and teapots just to make a mess of flour and egg yolks, stirring the sticky mush together in a well of itself, scattering across the countertop with no container to, well…contain it.

Eventually, the mess will begin to take shape, firm up, and turn into something worth working with. Then, work with it you must. Knead your dough until your fingers are stiff and your forearms tight, until it springs back sweetly when touched.

Making pasta is a lesson in building a life you love. It requires knowledge, yes — but more importantly it requires you to get your hands a little bit dirty and just feel your way through. Pay attention to detail — when things get sticky, you need to slow down and give a little bit extra, sprinkle some flour, but keep going. Carefully. Don’t move too fast, or the dough will start to tear. The end result is wonderful, but only if you take enough time on the journey to think about where you’re going.

Then, you need the right machinery and a practiced touch. It takes patience to refine, in tiny increments, the perfect structure. When you measure your progress in hatch marks, it can be hard to see it happen until — suddenly, what was a misshapen lump is a smooth sheet ready to cut into perfect strips. That mess of flour becomes strong, straight lines with a little bit of coaxing. The work gets fun, then. You get to create something beautiful, and you can finally see all of its potential.

Most importantly, making pasta is something best done with friends, and the results shared generously in good company. Pasta is not made to be tasted, it is made to be twirled and slurped and stuffed. Even if you’re trying a new preparation or presentation, there is an underlying sense of belonging in pasta, nestled under a warm blanket of sauce, and maybe a pillow of cheese. So, you should always make a double batch, and invite some others over to help.

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how-to’s & poems  amuse

I Am (Part 1 of 3) Joshua Lewin I am from pencils, paint, and pianos from the back porch in black Midnight with snuck cigarettes alight with fright.

I am from the cherry blossom falling in the front yard, and from the subway car.

I am from the card game, late at night. one more round before bed.

I am from two three one

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amuse how-to’s & poems

How To: Bon Vivant (2) in Paris Dina Samimi Reserve in advance. Make your way to Rue des Petites Écuries in the 10ème arrondissement. Enter the narrow bar-cuisine of Vivant 2, helmed by two fast talking servers, a fast moving dishwasher, an exceedingly young chef and his sous.

Find your seat. The whole place will glow — mountainous masses of taper candles cascade effortlessly, one atop the other, the previous melted down into a waxy nook for the next to take its place.

All the glorious food you will consume over the course of several hours alongside emptied bottles of wine will churn from this tiny team in this very space.

Browse the menu, en français, s’il vous plaît, with helpful translations from your two-man waitstaff (only if needed). You may have come here for the vibe (very intime) or the artful plates (as vivant as its namesake.)

But there is an item so improbable that it requires a disclaimer from waiter number 1, “c’est très particulier, madame,” to which you will knowingly wave, “oui, oui je sais.” Order that dish.

Post-purslane salads and perfect, bite-size pastillas, a single round of veal will arrive tangent to a proper dollop of fiery hot harissa. In one fell pour - from what can only be described as a copper water spout - the stew will flood to fill in the white space.

Mloukhya is a very special kind of food. Viscous and vegetal and the deepest blackened green, nearly ink-like in stew form, Mloukhya leaves are those of the jute mallow shrub (an herb that dates back to the time of the pyramids,) dried and pulverized and boiled into multi textured soups and stews across the African continent.

The Egyptian interpretation is soupy and sabzi-like, served alongside rice. The Levant loads its with aromatics and bouillon. Western Africans incorporate palm oil.

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If you stumble into a bout of prosperous luck, you’ll find an expert Tunisian preparation at Vivant 2. In this uniquely North African form — a dish that adorns Eid and any number of major life events (marriage, reunions, job promotions, cross country moves and homecomings) in Tunisian households — it is a labor of love and endearment. Mloukhya leaves are pounded into a fine powder, fried in an abundance of olive oil, cooked overnight and continued in the morning. Meat is added by daylight, previously seasoned and now stewed into submission. After a laborious cook comes a stack of crisp country bread or warm baguettes for scooping and dipping, breaking apart the achingly tender veal. Utensils strictly prohibited.

Back at Vivant 2, you’ll likely find yourself next to a characteristically French neighbor who will order the exotic sounding thing and bristle at the sting of the pepper, the thick unplaceable flavor, bread left untouched in favor of a spoon (quel scandale!) Ignore this. Use your hands. Scoop up every last morsel with your crusty bread. If and when you do, you’ll very well earn a personal visit from the chef (Pierre Touitou, very importantly French-Tunisian himself, you find out) swollen with pride and sharing another hefty pour, “encore de la sauce!”

Sit contentedly knowing you tasted a bowl of history.

This is a home cook’s dish; a recipe passed down by hand, eye and mouth over generations. Unwritten, bursting with warm nostalgie.

And then dessert.

how-to’s & poems amuse

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hors d’oeuvre

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hors d’oeuvre myths & essays

The Story of Hemings and Hercules Matthew Bullock Entering Black History Month, I was reminded of a story I came across about two men considered by some food historians to be the first celebrity chefs in America. Both slaves; James Hemings was owned

by Thomas Jefferson and Hercules Posey was the property of George Washington. Their skills and techniques influenced generations of cooks and chefs, and are still studied to this day.

Little is known about the early life of Hercules Posey. There was brief mention of him in tax documents that suggest he was kept as a house slave by Washington until 1786, and Washington once referred to him by name as a cook in a diary entry — but from that point on his story is well documented through his work.

Posey was eventually named head chef of the household. With his promotion, Hercules had the rare ability to make his own money by selling scraps and leftovers from the kitchen. He would sell bones, fat, feathers, and things that would otherwise be tossed in the trash.

With this money he was able to afford the clothes of a dandy — or, well dressed man.

According to historian Kelley Fanto Deetz, author of “Bound to the Fire: How Virginia’s Enslaved Cooks Helped Invent American Cuisine,” Hercules might have been America’s first celebrity chef.

“Chef Hercules was a very proud and confident man, whose culinary 16

skills and status were recognized throughout the nation,” she says.

“He demanded perfection from his staff in the presidential kitchen, and he commanded attention and respect from the public as well — something unheard of for enslaved laborers of his period.”

Despite his status, Hercules escaped on Washington’s 65th birthday when Washington was moving back to Mount Vernon and was never heard from again.

Unlike Hercules, Hemings’ birth and early life was well documented.

In 1765, James Hemings was born to the enslaved Betty Hemings and her enslaver John Wayles. Thomas Jefferson married the daughter of Wayles and inherited a dowry of slaves including Hemings and her famous sister Sally. In 1784, Jefferson became the minister of the French court and brought Hemings to Paris where he began training as a chef and learning the French.

Hemings became the Chef de Cuisine of the Hotel de Langeac, America’s first overseas embassy, being paid a wage of 24 livres a week, comparable to free white servants at the time. Hemings later made a deal with Jefferson for his freedom — nearly 70 years before the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation — when he agreed to teach his brother all he had learned.

For three years, he passed on everything he had learned.

Hemings took his own life at the age of 36. Even after his death, Hemings’s teachings were still being passed on to new cooks.

Enslaved cook Edith Fossette was sent, at the direction of Monticello, to the White House to teach the white cooks the Hemings way of Virginian-French cooking.

In a time when slavery over took the US and hundreds of thousands of slaves were taken from their homes and turned into cheap labor, these two were able to somehow rise above and escape cruel treatment while gaining respect of people the world over.

I grew up with the original Food Network. I looked up to Bobby Flay and Emeril, but as I examined this culinary history, I wish I could have seen these two culinary stars wow people with their complex creations in a time when there were no Robocoupes and Vitamixes or sous vide and vacuum sealers.

When we think about modern food we always look to France.

Although French cuisine has shaped the techniques and terms we use today, both Hercules and Hemings transformed French food and created a fusion culture before anyone knew what that was. The contributions of these would be celebrities and others like them should not be forgotten.

myths & essays hors d’oeuvre

We Hold These Myths to be True Joshua Lewin We have entered a parallel universe.

I am writing today from the conference room. A week ago you knew it as Peregrine, of here and of there, a Juliet + Company restaurant. I am writing from the conference table. It’s the long one by the windows. We knew it as table 41, you knew it as the place you might be able to sneak into if you forgot to make a reservation on Friday night.

It is all quiet. the phone will not ring. The music is playing though. It’s the same music, but it sounds all different. This room is so small when you are in it. It is cavernous when you are not. The quiet music echoes as if in an auditorium. It sounds like…alone. Funny… because it was designed for “together.”

Six months ago we released a small cookbook that is designed for everything fresh. Everything direct from the farmers market. “our market season” has sold out twice. Last week I was carrying armfulls of it to the book fair. My load on the way out was light.

The sun is streaming through the windows across my new long conference table, and stretching warm across my arms; shadows of the window logos tattooed on my skin. One of my favorite things about our restaurants is those serendipitous shadows. Sometimes they decorate tables, floors, walls. Today, they decorate me.

We are ready for fresh. We will be here for fresh. For our farmers. For you. Soon. But today we are preparing to cook for something different. In this universe we are cooking from cupboards. from boxes and from cans.

From bags. We are cooking for selves and for family.

Please, not too much for friends. For now.

At Juliet + Company, restaurants and media, we strive for simple elegance. Together those words mean something different than they mean alone. Simple is our Way; elegance our aspiration.

In that universe, elegance is something we achieve through effort. something we claim, something we take back from those that abuse it and treat it like something that can simply be gilded to life through preciousness. Our elegance is wrought through process.

Like a stone taken from the ground and polished slowly.

The results of an effort never known. Like a knife run over coarse shaping tools, then shined carefully and lightly before using.

Today we are cooking for survival. In a world that is not our own. But we are also cooking for fun. Fun where we can find it. Because why shouldn’t we find it. And we are cooking together, even though we are apart.

We are cooking for the collective benefit, at least you are if you are cooking from this, even though we are separated from touch.

We have no expectations of elegance in this world. And we are not afraid. Because we still have thought, and attention. We still have care. We still have fun.

Understand? Good. Play!* *This essay originally appeared in Bean Zine, Volume 1, and has been lightly modified for reprint here. For the rest of this story, see ofJuliet.com/alternate-reality

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hors d’oeuvre myths & essays

The Lemon in Copenhagen Meredith Leigh “A man’s work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.” ­— Albert Camus I am a nervous person, and so I almost didn’t go. It was my first day in a foreign city, my lodging was canceled as I navigated the airport, and so I wandered the streets of Copenhagen with a huge pack on my back trying to understand the public transportation, standing dopily in the bike lane, which I learned expediently that one does not do in Copenhagen. Five days later, I would be sketching the clever layout of the streets into my journal and texting my 13-year-old stepdaughter about the incredible public transit here, and the autonomy it notably provides to Danish teens. But for the moment, I was sweating, lost, and unglued. When I finally found my last-minute apartment rental after delaying my new hostess dreadfully, I collapsed on the unembellished sofa and thought I might never leave it. Embarrassed, I wondered if my entire stay in Copenhagen would be spent in this small, orderly space that might easily be a bedroom showcase nestled within an IKEA store. It started to rain.

But as I trolled the Rejseplanen, the magical Danish transportation app that allows you to type in your location and then shows you the timetables and modes of transit that will allow you to get there expediently, I began to loosen. Looking back, I think what hoisted me into my raincoat and out the door for the dinner reservation I had made almost a year prior was not the promise of food or ambience, but a healthy American skepticism about whether a bus and a train would actually materialize as this mystical app promised, if I just walked the two blocks to the conveniently located corner bus station. Boots on, hood up, I went out into the dusk and the rain.

Fifteen minutes later, rattled but amazed at my travel success, I stepped off of the metro at Kongens Nytorv, and wandered about the square trying to gain my above-ground bearings. I called the restaurant 18

to announce my tardiness. Wandering further in the wrong direction, my nervousness and self-doubt mounted. I stupidly circled buildings, in a delirious pattern that I now laugh at with gusto. Literally, when you step off of the metro at Kongens Nytorv in Copenhagen, Denmark, you can see the restaurant Geist from the station. My disheveled, wide-open, travel-weary idiocy had gotten the better of me.

Eventually I arrived, slightly damp, wearing an odd uniform of strappy silk overalls and rubber boots, and took myself out to dinner.

Geist is all grays and slate hues, with scrambled geometry. Round tables, an angular bar with square chairs, cylindrical poles, giant arching windows. My intimidation soared. I sat at the bar, flanked by perfectly comfortable regular people and their regular wellbred companions. As their conversation flowed, I was the silent imposter creature, with bare rain-speckled shoulders and messy hair, opening the menu, my aura of isolation slowly thrilling me. No longer technically lost, as I had been all day, I had no idea where I was.

I don’t remember what I ordered, but the “fuck it” came easily with the wine, and the coffee came with cotton candy, huge and cloud-like on the bar before me.

I laughed out loud, easily, finally. But the thing that brought me back to earth was a lemon. The lemon is what I will always remember.

Dining alone is a game for me. At a Michelin star restaurant it is like a personal tournament, especially for someone who lives within the food industry. Actually, maybe it’s only this way for someone who lives within the food industry who is decidedly non-upper class, who finds herself drawn away from her own profession by many of its airs, and thus is quietly engaged, perennially, in a hopeful search for it’s true heartbeat.

Naturally, I became most interested in what was happening in the kitchen, which is open, and serious. A young woman appeared to be staging, her movement— repetitive circles between stations with every move watched by the chef—was like an ice dance. I imagined

myths & essays hors d’oeuvre

thin pirouetting cuts in the restaurant’s floor. Amidst the gray surfaces, ceilings and walls, all the activity of the kitchen was amplified and illuminated, with the staff in white starched shirts and aprons to match the paint colors. Spotlighted.

matter where we fall on the spectrum. And that is the essence of hospitality, isn’t it? The thing we really miss is the sense that there is a place for us here, whoever the hell we are. Come in, sit down, you can see and feel and hear it, you can taste it for yourself.

Then suddenly, one of the young chefs whom I hadn’t been watching approached a bench that faced me, though some distance down the bar. Firmly grasping a lemon, he bestowed it’s zest most efficiently over a plated dish, expediently, solemnly, calmly. Something about that lemon— the rapid rasp, the neon dust, the quotidian ephemera of the action, the cook turning away as nonchalantly as if he had just flushed a toilet, moving onto another task… I didn’t recognize the significance of it right at the moment, but I recognize it now.

It goes without saying that the simultaneous insignificance and utter professionalism of the lemon hits just as hard. I can barely imagine anyone would zest a lemon that way outside of the unalloyed spotlight of the Geist kitchen on a rainy night. But here was a man at work, on an extraordinarily ordinary day, performing this singular yet oh so mundane thing. A thing he and I happily took for granted at the moment. Now it emerges as a reminder that life moves in unexpected ways, and that the future is just as unpredictable now as it has ever been.

Now, Geist is indefinitely closed, as are many restaurants all over the world. The famous and the damned (and sometimes both), they are all shuttered in the strange and mysterious time of COVID. I find myself daydreaming in memories of dining out, and strangely this one is the one that has set softly within me. It was the first image that my brain manifested as one of my bewildered children lamented in the early stages of lockdown that all we seem to be doing is waiting.

In the great covid pause, I find myself terribly ambivalent about the restaurant situation. Some of the essays and social media appeals are hopelessly elitist, reeking of the terror of a threatened personal brand.

And in this way, restaurants are important for a host of reasons that matter to just some people. But the lemon reminds us that there is at least one reason that matters to everyone: Restaurants can, if successful, help us remember and understand ourselves as human animals in a real world. And we miss them now not just for the food, the wine, the atmosphere, and the company, but also as bastions of our very social existence, our human experience, in a time of social destitution and confusion.

What are we waiting for? she asked.

A tremendous question. I found myself telling her about the lemon, as if to say: we are waiting for nothing. Or, we are waiting for everything that seemed like nothing before. As I was rambling, I described the lemon by saying something about how in that moment, it had unexpectedly epitomized comfort. That in a way, I had seen myself in the lemon. The everyday, awkward lady hidden shyly yet somehow safely. Not at all out of place in a bustling venue of sociableness and sophistication.

After all, regardless of whether we find our persona in a restaurant, a good one reminds us of our social self, no

I have zested at least ten thousand lemons in my culinary life. Since my trip to Copenhagen I have not zested a single one without thinking of that moment at Geist. I told the sad child: you just never know. It may be something you’ve seen a zillion times that someday suddenly thrills you. What I didn’t say is that I’ve been wanting to get to the bottom of that lemon moment for years. I think she understood. She is an artist, after all.

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hors d’oeuvre myths & essays

Grief, Quarantined Maddie Trainor After all the other Easter service attendees had departed, one woman remained in the old stone Episcopal church in downtown Lexington. She waited in the pews towards the front of the chapel, wrinkled hands balanced atop the cane in front of her. She was older, in her early 80s, but her short brown curls held no gray, and her bright blue eyes shone from behind thinrimmed glasses.

The priest noticed her waiting, having just finished sending off the churchgoers to their egg hunts and brunches. He recognized her; she had been a member of the church for several decades, longer than he had been on staff there. And she had been the first homebound member whom the priest had visited and served the Eucharist during her recovery from a stroke she suffered two years prior.

“Hello, Margaret Ann,” the priest said, sitting down next to her.

“Happy Easter,” she said, smiling. “I’d like to visit my husband, Sam, in the columbarium. Will you take me there?”

“Certainly,” the priest said.

He offered her his arm and helped her to stand. They slowly made their way down the aisle of the church, the saints in the stained glass windows glowing and seeming to smile. The priest supported her down the stairs outside, and then together they walked the stone path that wound around the side of the church and led them through a small iron gate and into the memorial garden. A stone wall bordered the area and supported the columbarium, a wall holding the ashes of deceased church members. Each place was marked by a large square plaque. Flowers and shrubs lined the wall of the church, and water trickled out of a low stone fountain on the opposite end of the garden.

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Since the ground turned to cobbled stones and grass, the priest instructed Margaret Ann to wait on the path while he searched for Sam among the fading names engraved in the plaques. Trees reached over the wall, hiding parts of the road from view but offering no shade from the sun that reflected off the metal plates.

The priest adjusted his glasses and shielded his eyes.

He strained to read the names, worn down by weather.

He read every name once and then all of them again but could not find Sam. Sweat built on his forehead.

Perhaps there was some mistake. Was Margaret Ann affected with dementia? Had she forgotten where her husband was buried? Was he even dead? Or had the church made some great mistake and somehow mislabeled or neglected to inscribe Sam’s marker?

He turned back to look at her, and she was smiling in the sunshine, eyes closed, face turned toward the sky, hands on her cane.

“You know, Father,” she said. “It’s really difficult for me to get out. I’m old, and I suspect this will be the last time I get out to see my husband’s grave. Thank you so much for helping me with this. I know you’re busy.”

The priest scanned the names one final time. And then there he was, Sam, inscribed on a plaque in the second row on the far right of the wall. Shadow obscured his corner.

“I found him!” the priest said. He stepped over to Margaret Ann and helped her walk across the cobbled stones and over to the wall.

A slew of apologies tumbled out of his mouth: for the hot, bright sun, the kind of metal they had used for the grave markers, the way the rain had aged the metal over time…

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She stopped him. “It’s okay,” she said. She reached up with a trembling hand and pressed it flat to the plaque the metal, over her husband’s name. “The important thing is that we looked long enough to find him.”

Almost a year later, while I waited in the Atlanta airport to board my plane back home to Boston, I streamed a sermon that had been preached a couple weeks earlier at my grandmother’s church. The priest kicked off the season of Lent with a message about patience including the Easter anecdote about Margaret Ann — or Mamaw, as I knew her. The plane began boarding, but I hurried to the restroom to quickly cry and then wipe my tears before boarding the plane.

— None of my family visited Mamaw for Thanksgiving because she had just visited my family in October.

I had FaceTimed her from Boston. I had given her a tour of my apartment and talked about my work at the restaurant up the street. That is the last time that I remember talking to her.

She had been receiving treatments last year for cancer, something we never thought she’d battle given her obsession with healthy eating. Whenever she visited my family, she always made my brothers and me eat cantaloupe for breakfast. When we were little, she tried to convince us to eat broccoli by calling them “little trees.” She told me to drink orange juice, to make sure I was getting my Vitamin C. She always wore sunscreen outside, and rarely sunbathed, so it was shocking when she was diagnosed with skin cancer after finding a lump on her neck. She chose a less aggressive treatment than chemo, and it seemed to go well. But her last treatment in November completely exhausted her.

At Christmas, she had dramatically changed. She always believed a woman should always wear lipstick and mascara when out in the world, but that day her face was bare. I tried to talk with her at the family gathering at her cousin’s house, tried to smile and make conversation. But her strong, bold, and opinionated personality was reduced to a quiet whisper of a voice, trembling hands, thin pale skin sinking into her jawbones. She barely spoke, and she barely managed to eat a few bites of the plates of food my mom brought to her.

I miss her, I miss her, I miss her, I thought. And I was sitting right next to her.

When she went into the hospital sometime in February, I knew in my gut that it was time. I told my roommate, “I think my grandma’s dying,” as casually as though I were reading him a random news headline from my phone.

My mom thought Mamaw just needed a different antidepressant, or better food, or her next treatment.

My mom spent the rest of February and the beginning of March in Kentucky, determined to at least get her mother to eat. My mom coaxed little bites of ice cream or candy to Mamaw’s lips, but she spat everything out.

Cancer pressed on her throat. Her body was tired.

Eventually my mom stopped trying to heal her mother and turned her attention instead to just being with her and cherishing their last moments together.

In the weeks leading up to her death, I would often find a knot in my throat or tears in my eyes, missing her. I wished that I could just hear her voice one last time, hear her ask me how I was doing, what I was learning, if I was writing or playing music, who I was dating, if I was eating my fruits and vegetables. Regret speared my chest as I remembered all the phone calls I had ignored from her.

— Mamaw passed away on a quiet Tuesday evening. That Friday, I flew to Kentucky. Given the amounts of people passing through airports and planes, I was concerned about catching coronavirus, since it had reached the US and was no longer a vague threat or foreign problem.

On my flight, I sanitized the tray and armrests with a wipe my neighbor generously lent me. I hoped that washing my hands and keeping them away from my face would keep me healthy.

— On Saturday, my immediate and extended family gathered for Mamaw’s service at her church, the one she and my grandfather had attended since before my mother was born. The service was small, but lovely, and one of the priests who was new to the church but had spent significant time with Mamaw spoke to the moments he shared with her, her memorable character, her full life, and, at the end, her peace with dying.

Her ashes were placed with my grandfather’s in their columbarium niche.

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I didn’t have much time to grieve Mamaw. I had received no coronavirus updates, but my germaphobia was heightened on my flight back to Boston when the woman next to me kept expressing in broken English that she felt sick. I couldn’t understand if she was just nauseous from the flight, had a headache, or worse.

The flight attendants offered me a new seat after the woman continued to talk to me and invade my personal space trying to communicate with the flight attendants walking by. I wanted to help her, but I couldn’t understand her, and I was worried about her — or anyone, for that matter — traveling while ill. Would I get the virus? Would I carry it unknowingly and pass it on to someone else more vulnerable than me? I had no way of knowing.

— On Wednesday March 11th, the World Health Organization announced that the spread of the disease COVID-19 had become a global pandemic. I felt like I could throw up with anxiety as I read the headlines and the articles and the Facebook posts people were circulating about the terrifying situations in Italy and China, the countries worst affected by the virus at that point.

I returned to work on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.

We washed our hands. Constantly. We cleaned everything. Constantly. After the slowest brunch I’ve ever seen on Saturday, my hands were cracked and bleeding. I showed them off on Instagram: “if your hands aren’t cracked and bleeding, you’re not washing your hands enough!” But my hands were so raw on Sunday, I couldn’t bear to wash them anymore.

I had finished serving a table of three people mimosas and bloody Marys when my manager told me that table would be our last. The owners joined us about an hour later, after we had cleaned and shut down most of service. The owners revealed their decision to close the restaurant, following in the footsteps of many other restaurants and bars in the neighborhood. That evening, the governor ordered restaurants to be closed for seated service until early April.

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The day the restaurant closed felt like years ago, even though it had really only been a few weeks. Each day brought new headlines, new emotions, new information. One moment I felt hopeful and calm; the next, utterly overwhelmed. Anxiety curled up like a very fat and lazy cat, right on top of my chest above my lungs. It weighed me down to my bed most days, depression curling around me in her seductive, weepy way. Anxiety pressed behind my shoulders and at the base of my back, places on my body that were rarely in pain unless overwhelming stress was happening. Gone was the anxiety that usually sliced through my abdomen with a burning urgency when I anticipated a scary situation. This anxiety was weary and heavy. It was bone deep. It was the kind of fear that has given up.

I thought I was just experiencing anxiety and depression, and then someone on the internet named the feeling that I and the rest of the world felt: grief.

Grief for lost routines, lost normalcy, lost jobs, lost community, lost lives. Grief for global loss.

I forgot, in the midst of it all, that I was supposed to be grieving for my grandmother. I knew she was gone yet I had not stopped to feel her absence. I had left the feeling behind me once I crossed the threshold of the airport in Kentucky.

Towards the end of March, I sat down at my desk to try to say something about the assortments of grief I had accrued. I contemplated the foreign quarantine grief, the lingering grief of leaving childhood and becoming an independent adult, and the fresh grief for my Mamaw.

My hands hovered over the computer keyboard. Tears blurred the edges of my vision, and my throat ached, but I resisted the urge to run from the feeling or to be suffocated. I inhaled. Grief filled up my lungs, expanding the tightness in my chest. I exhaled. Grief rolled through me and onto the page.

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Been There Before Joshua Lewin The guidebook serves its purpose in a city if you haven’t long to stay. Going with the locals is the perfect way to live like one, but requires the time to fully appreciate the experience. A resident absorbs their city differently than a traveler; glossing quickly over important finds on the way to favorite hang outs. For those trips more than a weekend but not long enough to truly take on a place’s heartbeat, I recommend setting out with someone who has simply been there before.

This is how I was led through the cut stone doorway of the Parisian pub, La Guillotine (or Le Caveau des Oubliettes.) An urban dive by two names atop a subterranean blues club in the Latin Quarter of a foreign land. The first name translates easily, the latter I’ll offer some help: “The Cave of the Forgotten” historically held prisoners awaiting decapitation and now holds fans of American music staples, French and expat alike.

Out of the quiet but active Paris evening we were confronted with a handful of men against the rear wall; loudly chanting soccer anthems and warranting extra attention from a lone, nervous but well composed, bartender. Moments later they were subjected to the most polite removal of patrons from a pub I have ever witnessed. Welcome to Paris.

Not ejected for any physical transgression it turned out but simply their inability to shut up, as a few minutes later the sounds of blues filled the forgotten cave below along with images from the stage projected on cctv.

The real character of La Guillotine emerged.

The bartender, filling her mounting orders with declining ease caught us for the tourists we were when our order of two absinthe sent her scurrying away to hidden storage compartments for glasses and spoons rarely used.

Just for a second her eyes sank as if to suggest, why not the pastis?, but then a smile as she set to work finding the requested bottle and filling our order.

A single euro prompted a sincere “thanks” the h dropped and the t pronounced almost as an “s.” The ringing of a small bell reminding other patrons that gratuities, of any amount, large or small, are happily accepted here. We took our spot along the wall that a few minutes prior held the hardiest of locals and took in the sounds and images of the show. At once discordant after an afternoon of rotisserie in the park, streetside charcuterie, and espresso enjoyed on the patio; but also somehow the sounds of American blues, alongside the local accent combined for an experience authentically Parisian.

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An Introvert’s Dream Samantha Mangino I should start this off by saying that, when I told my coworkers I was writing this piece from the perspective of an introvert their immediate response was, “you’re not an introvert.” Which I had to laugh at. In many ways, I could see why they’d think that. They’ve all witnessed the pure joy I have talking to guests day to day. I chose a job that is inherently social!

As someone who began community theater at the age of 9 and often thought growing up that I’d go into the performing arts, my current job doesn’t feel that far off. I loved the thrill of a high energy performance, the applause, changing out of my costume and going through a crowded lobby. Most importantly I loved going home at the end of it all; saying hello to my parents and then quite immediately crashing on my couch before going up to my room. In fact, a childhood therapist once asked me where my happy place was.

“A beach you go to? Somewhere your family went on vacation?”

“No,” I told her. “My bedroom.”

She laughed. But it was true then, and it’s true now.

I love a quiet bedroom that I have cultivated and decorated to be purely my own. My room has always been where I’ve felt most truly at home, and it still rings true today. At the end of a long shift or a vacation away, all I want is to be back in my room all by myself. It is how I center myself and when I feel most connected to myself. So staying at home the past few weeks? Getting to spend as much time in my room as I want? Well, the true optimist who can somehow ignore the chaos of what is happening in the world says that this has been absolute heaven.

Days upon days spent at home? I’ll take it. FaceTimes with friends that are lovely hangouts but that you get to shut-off anytime you want? Maybe this is actually my ideal form of socialization. The past few weeks I’ve felt the most relaxed and at peace than I have in… I’m not sure. This is all obviously relative. We’re functioning 24

in madness at the moment – it’s impossible to stay perfectly sane. When I ask friends how they are, I always specify “None of us are good. The baseline is pretty terrible — so how are you relative to that?”

In this present moment, the positive seems in short supply so I’m seeking it out in myself and others. For me I’ve been able to peel back a lot of my daily life that doesn’t come naturally to me. Those acts of service are things I love, but they’ve separated me from the quieter parts that feel like my truest self.

When things were normal, I felt quite transient. Not always at my home. Satisfying a new need to travel. Or splitting time between mine and my partner's house.

Long hours outside of my home – often only being there to sleep, not even to enjoy a meal. And now, I’m discovering unmarked territory; the necessity to slow down and work from home, being responsible for my own meals, having time for long lost hobbies. Yes, I did finally finish that scarf I started in the fall.

None of this has been simple. I’m not writing this as a sort of declaration of a solitary life I plan on living from here on out. There have been a lot of tears, and a lot of panicoments of pure dread, when being alone actually does feel like the worst thing in the entire world at the moment. Yet, I’m desperate to find the silver lining – a twinkling of hope – right now as I sit in my kitchen and dearly miss the kitchen at work and chatting with guests or my co-workers. I want things to be back to normal. I’m ok with missing these essential parts of myself that I label as my introvertedness if it means being able to go to work, my neighborhood bar, or even feeling like it’s safe to visit my parents.

So, while I've enjoyed getting to indulge in my proclivity to spend time alone to feel truly relaxed and at ease, I’m ready for this to be over. While an introvert may do okay under these circumstances, none of this could ever be anyone’s dream.

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Extrovert, Turned In Ariel Knoebel I am sitting in my favorite chair with the window open to the crisp spring evening. There is a pot of beans bubbling rhythmically in the kitchen behind me, while gentle sounds of my neighborhood ripple and jangle outside. My cat just burst from the windowsill and scampered across the living room, until she was met with the distasteful (to her) puppy enthusiasm of my dog, who so badly wants to learn how to play with her.

Cross-species rules are difficult to learn and enforce.

I am finishing my glass of wine, poured promptly at 5:01pm in accordance with the rules of common decency. One of the rules I’ve arbitrarily decided to uphold, as I haven’t put on pants with any sort of zipper or fly in many days, and I’ve had a brownie for breakfast at least the last two.

The little ecosystem of my two room apartment is suddenly my whole world, for the most part at least.

I take luxurious walks with my dog every morning, counting down until even that is no longer allowed. The spring blossoms bursting across their tree branches look lonely without their usual admirers out with the first rays of the season’s sun. We wander the neighborhood streets in the sunshine, crossing to the opposite side whenever we see someone. I’ve started waving at every stranger I pass, smiling goofily at the suggestion of another human, even many yards away, even under a mask. Yesterday, I realized I was singing along with my headphones. Outloud. In public. Another way the rules no longer apply in this uncertain, upside down time.

I am fueled by human connection. I gravitate towards crowds, greet and goodbye with hugs, I socialize closely, not from a distance. I’ve spent hours on the phone with friends and family over the past two weeks, but I often leave those calls craving something more. I feel jittery and sugar-high, but still in need of something hearty, some nourishment I can only get in real life.

Ironically, I’ve set my life up for ten years to put distance between my family, some of my closest friends, and I, as I’ve moved ever farther afield in pursuit of my own fulfillment. Suddenly, that distance feels real in a way it never has before. I can’t jump on a plane or in the car and see them in just a few hours.

I’m starving for the presence of another person, in a way that feels essential. But I know that for a while longer, I will have to stick to just waving from across the street with an over eager smile. I will have to continue to sit here, in my favorite chair, listening to the sounds of the world at low volume outside my window. There are new rules, new lines I’m not allowed to cross. They are hard to learn and difficult to enforce.

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From Crete We Flew to Freedom Janaka Stucky My first time in Greece was for my honeymoon several years ago. My wife and I had already established a life for ourselves by the time we wed, so instead of a registry we simply established a fund for friends and family to help facilitate our trip. We’ve both traveled extensively—probably over 20 countries between the two of us—and are no strangers to roughing it. I often say I prefer to “travel” than to “take a vacation.” But this was our honeymoon and, like so many countless couples before us, we wanted to spend these early days of our newfound union in leisure and some measure of extravagance.

After purchasing our business class flights and booking several days of our two-week trip in a world-class hotel on the Utopic island of Santorini, we joked about fearing our experience would be so magnificent that life after Greece would seem unsatisfying by contrast.

Indeed: the from the luxurious adjustable sleeper seats, to the superior wine and food, to the cowhide rugs in the business lounge in Zurich—with its open bar and unlimited buffets while we waited for our connection— the flight over felt like a revelation that left economy travel even more wanting than before.

Even the first 48 hours after arriving felt like a whirlwind of comfort. We dined on the rooftop of our hotel overlooking the Parthenon at sunset. We took a cruise through the Aegean Sea to get from Athens to Santorini. And when we stepped foot on Santorini, we almost went mad with its beauty. That evening, toasting with Champaign on our private balcony overlooking the island’s caldera, as we watched the sun itself paint the impossibly still sapphire waters with a molten gold until it slowly reddened and shrank into the darkening sky like the time-lapse of a bullet wound closing on Zeus’ own skin, we burst into laughter at the overwhelming and absurd beauty of it all before retiring to bed.

Then we got sick.

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There is a 7-day gap in the journal I kept during our honeymoon in Greece, and a corresponding fuzziness in my mind, that accounts for the following days my wife and I spent curled up on the floor of the bathroom in our hotel desperately clutching the meticulously laid tile as our heads spun and our guts revolted from the norovirus making its way through our bodies. We came to Greece to celebrate a pinnacle of closeness in our relationship and, truly I tell you, there is no greater intimacy than caring for each other through the worst stomach bug of your lives.

Somehow, after a visit from the island’s stunningly handsome physician and another thousand dollars dropped at our hotel for two additional unplanned nights while we recovered, we unsteadily made our way off Santorini, onto another boat, and finally to a humble apartment in the seaside city of Heraklion on the island of Crete. We recuperated there for another day or two, subsisting mostly on bread and fruit, and then finally found our strength again on the Southern coast of Crete in the fishing village of Agia Galini.

The first meal I recall enjoying again after that ordeal was a simple breakfast we had prepared for ourselves from items we picked up in the village market that lay a mile down a twisting road from the two-room villa we had rented in the mountain overlooking the village and the sea. We sat outside in the sun sipping coffee and snacking on kefalotyri, local salami, and a small array of olives, tomato and cucumber—all grown on the island. Farm to farmer’s market to our table, in less than 30 miles.

My journal notes over the next several days, the final ones of our trip, only touch briefly on the majesty of the sea or the mystery of the Minoan ruins. Instead, I make notes about the small villages we visited but didn’t shop in. There is a long entry about standing by the side of a dirt road in an empty valley listening to goat bells tinkle in the distance. Seeing my bride in

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that moment—as if for the first time—a bright flame in her red floral dress as the warm rain gently began to fall around us and the storm clouds breaking across mountain tops in the distance while the petrichor scent rose up from the sunbaked earth. “It smells nasty,” she said in that moment—and we laughed about that for the rest of the day.

I also made notes of the endless bottles of chilled local raki, snails in a savory tomato stew, chicken and lamb slow-cooked with onion and potato in a traditional Cretan oven, pistachio ice cream, Greek coffee, eating fish cooked in nothing but olive oil within sight of the boat that caught it that morning. In Crete we had found a haven from the molecular gastronomy and abstracted hyper romance of Santorini—of what we had thought would be the highlight of our honeymoon. Instead, we were now just present with each other and a few ingredients between us. Each meal almost aggressive in its simplicity and for that reason also mythological in my memory. Peasant food. Food of the gods.

I stayed there in the water a while longer. I wondered whether life after Greece would be unsatisfying after all, not for its luxury but for its simplicity. I thought about the shapes we are poured into when we arrive in this life, the shapes we are forged into by life itself, and the mystery of what we have not yet become. I thought about my wife on the beach, incandescent in the aureate sparks of another setting sun, the memory of her first touch fading into me, through me. I thought about the purest vision of nothingness Daedalus must have seen as he watched his only son falling toward the face of the world. Then I turned, slowly in the water, and made my way back toward land.

On our last evening there, while we waited for our meal to be served in a seaside tavern, I followed a little black and white kitten down to the beach and walked out to the sea in front of us. I kicked off my shoes and swam out over my head to float for a few minutes, listening to the water lap at the breakwater down the shoreline and staring up the mountainside at the rock from which Daedalus and Icarus allegedly ascended to escape a Labyrinth of their own design.

“From here,” the stone upon that ledge reads, “is where Daedalus and Icarus flew to freedom.”

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Photo Essay Andrew Anderson

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This collection of Andrew Anderson work is an examination of light and dark. A restaurant, a highway, a car wash, and a backyard can become entire worlds, moods, or dreams if we catch them at just the right moment and in the right light — or dark.

Follow his work on Instagram @Andrrw.

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Rumi Spice: Interview with Kimberly Jung Will Deeks My phone rings on a cold day in February. The number that shows on my screen is unfamiliar and has a Los Angeles area code. I know I have a call scheduled to interview Kimberly Jung. It is her, she still holds the area code from the city she grew up. I am not aware at that moment, but the fact that even after all the places she has been in this world, she still holds that area code speaks volumes to what she learned there, and how some of that early learing has informed her life since.

When I spoke to Kim that day, coronavirus was just a headline buried under the digital fold. It was nothing that the majority of people, even regular news consumers, were spending more than a brief moment raising their internal eyebrows at. It was still to many a problem created by a country many miles away, with consequences that couldn’t possibly reach the shores of the United States.

Now, to be clear, this is not an article, profile, or interview about coronavirus. What follows here is conversation and reflection about one person’s journey to find a place of productivity, and purpose.

In recording the conversation, and adding some reflections, I cannot imagine a more important time for people to be informed by someone like Kim’s story and philosophy.

Leadership is in the news right now. The idea of it, the question of what makes a strong leader. The question of what makes people feel safe in terms of who they trust to steer the ship, and work in a global community for the common good.

— Our conversation takes place while she is on a bike. The weather outside is cold and blistering New England.

Boston at its most windy. On the tail end of a mild winter, this is without a doubt an outlier of a frigid day.

Still, her voice comes through clear and focused.

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If she had not told me she was on a bike, I would have assumed the traffic sounds were the result of an open window in her office.

I have met Kim but I don’t know her well so we begin with Kim’s initial connection to the Juliet + Co. Universe, Rumi Spice. Rumi spice is a company that connects saffron farmers in Afghanistan to the proper channels to sell their saffron to chefs. Kim first became exposed to the situation in Afghanistan while she was serving in the Army, after graduating from West Point.

While earning a Business degree from Harvard she met her business partners and started Rumi. Not too long after that, Josh Lewin emailed her wanting to utilize the saffron from Rumi, and she told the story.

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KJ: I got an email from Josh, and I am like who is this

guy? A Marine turned chef that wants to work with me?

So we meet up, and share stories about Afghanistan. It’s rare to find that kind of an environment to speak about those situations. He invited me to come to the James Beard House with him for a dinner he was cooking there. He wanted to feature Rumi Spice. I was amazed that he would be willing to share his spotlight with me like that. It changed a lot for us, and Josh was just amazing about the whole process.

WD: But how did it start, where did the idea for Rumi come from?

KJ: I was at harvard business school and I heard about a farmer named Hadjif who couldn’t find the proper channels to sell his saffron. I bought a plane ticket to Afghanistan and went back as a civilian. I bought the ticket on a whim. We met with farmers and it started from there.

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Kim continues on to speak about what became so important to Rumi, is that farmers and employees were not viewed as the benefactors of some type of charity, but instead viewed as equals in true business exchange.

Here was Kim leading the way in something vitally important, but still not viewing herself as any more important than anyone else who was a part of the process. Showcasing an ability to lead, and take the role of leadership seriously, without viewing the status that comes with leadership as a symbol of a greater worth than anyone else.

Or as some would view it, good leadership in its true form.

—

WD: Now what is interesting to me is that you start this company, based so heavily on your experience, and still you do end up walking away. Moving on to something new. Can you talk about that?

KJ: There are a couple of factors there. I work well in

a white space. I want to start from nothing. Just be in a room and start from nothing. Now I remember being on my third or fourth trip to Afghanistan and seeing people working in Rumi Uniforms and using Rumi machinery. We had made something happen from nothing. That is what I really love.

WD: So you enjoy the beginning?

KJ: I am someone who likes to start fires. Building

discipline and structure. Stepping back and looking at the beauty of watching something grow. Sometimes I feel like I was born to be the captain, but I mean that in a sense of my job being helping people to be the absolute best that they can be. Part of helping people like that is having a vision and a mission and believing in myself. Leading isn’t about it being a cult of Kim Jung, but about everyone helping each other. And maybe at a certain point I am not needed.

— As the cars flew by Kim that day, she went on to tell me about her parents. Immigrants who settled in Los Angeles. Her father, a man, who with English as his second language, became an engineer and financial analyst. On top of that he worked in the construction business, and was involved in California politics. Her mother works in real estate.

What I pull from Kim telling me her parents’ story is a sense of drive that comes not from drive for the sake of it; instead it is a drive drawn from having a strong vision for oneself. A drive drawn from a strong vision of how to make the world a better place; both for oneself and those close to them, and for society at large.

She says her parents are “The definition of resilient and were ok with failing in the beginning.” That notion of her parents ties in with her reflections of her time at West Point. Where she describes herself as “spazzy” and the experience as being one in which she “got her ass kicked.” Still she views her time there as positive.

It seems that could only be handled as positive if someone is successful in maintaining that strong vision of self, and that acceptance of early failure leading to future progress.

The conversation turns to Kim’s current educational pursuit, a Masters in mechanical engineering from MIT. —

WD: What led you to mechanical engineering?

KJ: I am fascinated by business. Business is knowing how the world works. Mechanical engineering is very similar.

WD: I have never heard that kind of comparison

before, but as someone who doesn’t know anything about engineering, that appeals to me.

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KJ: (Laughs) To be honest I am not someone who is very mechanical. It’s a real challenge.

WD: Not mechanical, but drawn to engineering?

KJ: Well engineering was one of my first interests,

but as I said it is hard. It’s all connected in that I feel strongly about working with people and engineering teams. It’s also just that engineering is what in some ways makes the world work. Leading people and learning how they work best together, and taking a mechanical approach to that. It’s hard to know where it will lead, but it’s exciting to me that what I am learning could go in many directions.

— In speaking with Kim about some of the significant events in her life, I gather a sense of reflection and also a sense of connectedness. She is someone who can remind us that A+B doesn’t always equal C. It is an ability to maintain a sense of curiosity while having the strength work through uncertain and less than ideal circumstances. At West Point she volunteered to recite Schofield’s definition of discipline in front of a large group of enrollees. She tripped over the words several times before landing on something that made sense. When she tells me this story, it sounds as if she knows it wasn’t her finest moment on paper, but as she is laughing and reflecting, she tells me that she is “glad that she did it.”

That type of drive, moving through the world and working at a challenge until one gets it right speaks to a level of grit that requires strength. It has become somewhat of a common narrative in our culture to recite these attitudes and simply grant people who embody them an emotional trophy. While there is nothing wrong with this, I do look at Kim as someone that moves outside of the category of simply ‘having grit.’

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As she has said in her own words, “None of this would have been possible if I didn’t lean in, but more importantly, get a whole bunch of people to lean in with me.” Kim Jung speaks to something that is quite rare with this sentiment. Determination, not solely for personal gain, but instead with the notion of inspiring an entire team of people to drive forward.

— Kim eventually reaches the end of her bike ride, and before she lets me off the phone, she makes a point to interview me about my own life. About my own drives, and about what brought me to the place that I have found myself.

She points out that we have in common that Josh took a chance on both of us, and have a good laugh about that. My story is not important here, but I bring this up because it continues to illustrate how I felt after speaking with Kim about her journey.

There will always be challenges, personal, interpersonal, in a community, and globally. None of these challenges however are impossible, if we are willing to know ourselves, know those around us, and work together.

I also recommend, as Kim has reminded me to do, to think about who you are, who others are, and how that knowledge can help each of us work together on what is important. Helping each other be, with just a little support and leadership, the person we are capable of being.

Further reading: kimberly-jung.com . rumispice.com

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dessert recipes

A Two Way Street: The Reciprocity of Education Joshua Lewin Originally appeared in Food Arts, February 2013 When I made the decision to get serious about my butchering education, I knew I was going to need a little help. Friends recommended I spend a weekend at Mosefund Farm in New Jersey. Mosefund, among other things, specializes in raising a breed of pork called the Mangalitsa. Once rare, but now increasingly common on American menus, Mangalitsa is an Austrian specialty, which is uniquely fatty and great for charcuterie.

a gregarious, lifelong resident of Arizona; his mother, from South Carolina. Hers, a more reserved pair, both from Colombia.

I knew this was going to be a surprise to both sets of parents, which kept me awake for a few nights before the class. It’s one thing to welcome a group of six individuals who come expecting to get their hands dirty, bloody, and slick as the raw fat melts on the board. It’s quite another thing to surprise two sets of in-laws with a dead lamb and hand them a knife.

While I could continue on about the Mangalitsa; this is really about education. On this farm, once a year, the president of the Austrian Mangalitsa Breeders’ Association visits to instruct and supervise a handful of students in the slaughtering, butchering, preparation, and consuming of his beloved hog. I learned an awful lot that weekend. My friend Rachel and I made a road trip out of it and learned a lot about each other, too, in between the slaughter and skinning of a 250-pound pig, the European style butchering of the carcass, and the enjoyment of several very fun meals.

But the day came, and the group arrived. Thankfully no one was wearing high heels. They were all smiling. They must not know why they are here yet…right? But no, they did. They were excited and ready to get to work.

That weekend inspired me to bring the spirit of discovery and appreciation to interested members of the public, inside the restaurant. Typically these programs are a one-day affair, which is somewhat abbreviated, but is still plenty of time to learn.

Pedro, from Colombia, was a great lover of food. He enjoyed the growing “fresh” market culture in the United States and good cooking. But he sure missed Colombia, where you can eat a different fruit, fresh and local, every day for a month, any month, without any repeats. He wasn’t much of a hunter or a butcher himself, but was certainly comfortable with the idea.

The group convenes on a Sunday afternoon, after brunch and before dinner service begins. At that hour, the restaurant is open, but slow. There is activity all around as the line cooks prep for dinner service. The small group of butchery students learn a few things, by osmosis, about working in a small space and staying out of the way.

A recent class quickly became a favorite of mine. A young couple purchased the space for 6 and brought along each of their parents as a gift. The family turned out to be fun and quite diverse. His father, 48

Tom, from Arizona, was an avid hunter and a big believer in eating what he captures, and eating it well.

He recounted stories — The one he left hanging in the garage because he’d hurt his shoulder and had to teach his wife to dress it. The one he left in the bathtub but forgot to warn the family about.

The lamb on the table reminded him of a favorite restaurant in Colombia that specialized in a sort of chicken stew, sancocho. At this particular establishment, you would place your order sometime in the mid-afternoon and then wait a long while.

Hours? He seemed to remember it must have been hours. Perhaps they were out choosing the chicken, still live, before preparing it fresh. Whatever they were doing, he hadn’t forgotten that particular Sancocho,

recipes dessert

and it was fun to remind him of it that day.

Things started slowly, as the group became acclimated to the kitchen environment, and to each other. I asked the farmer to split the lamb, for the purpose of the class. I first demonstrated the cuts fully on one side, and had a little discussion about how they might be used.

Halfway through, we grilled up the small skirt steaks and everyone had a taste of their work. Revitalized, we retrieved the second side from the walk-in and by then the group was really ready to dive in.

I stuck close by, as the loin sections were cut, cleaned and portioned. And then I gave the students a little more freedom as the leg sections were cut for sausage making. We finished up the portioning, stuck a few things in their respective cures, and cleaned up our workspace.

sancocho

serves 4

1 large chicken, broken into quarters, breasts reserved for another meal 2 carrots, peeled and diced 2 stalks celery, diced

3 onions, peeled and diced

1 red bell pepper, seeded and diced 2 cloves garlic, minced 4 sprigs thyme 2 bay leaves

2 sprigs rosemary

10 cups chicken stock 6 ounces flour

These classes end with a meal. We sit down for a few courses based around different cuts of the animal we were working with. In this case:

6 ounces butter

Lamb shoulder and pistachio rillettes with Anadama Bread and Violet Mustard

1 bunch cilantro, picked from it’s stems but left whole (reserved for serving)

Ab Gosht, a Persian stew made with lamb shanks, potato and a tomato broth spiced with dried lime and saffron.

And then a sheep’s milk cheese followed by gelato.

What a wonderful way to see a family come together, first at the butcher’s block and then at the dinner table.

It cost me a little time on a Sunday afternoon, but the work had to get done anyway. The cost to the restaurant was a few plates of food and a few glasses of wine. In return, we run a class that pays for a whole animal that is sold on the menu the rest of the week.

My education, also, continues, as every time I instruct a class of beginners I am forced back to the basics and always learn something new. And if I’m lucky, we end up with a group like this one, and we can learn a little something about people too.

And that is how, 3 hours of discussion, butchering, and eating; all about lamb… leads to a simple recipe for chicken.

1 teaspoon fresh ground cumin 12 new potatoes

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

In a heavy, oven-safe pan, heat 1 tablespoon of cooking oil over medium high heat.

Season the chicken leg quarters liberally with salt pepper and coriander and then sear on both sides.

Add 2 cups chicken stock, half the carrots, celery, onion and herbs. Cover the pan and cook in the oven until fork tender. 90 minutes to 2 hours.

Meanwhile prepare the soup base by heating a heavybottomed pot over medium heat. Add the butter and remainder of the vegetables, including bell pepper, garlic, cumin and a pinch of salt.

Sweat until soft, careful not to brown the vegetables.

Add the flour and cook until just beginning to color.

Add remaining chicken stock and herbs as well as the potatoes. Bring to a simmer and cook until potatoes are done and soup is slightly thickened.

Serve over chicken thighs with a bowl of rice and cilantro on the side.

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dessert recipes

Chestnut Dessert Soup Shan James American chestnut (Castenea dentata) once made up a quarter of all trees in the native Eastern forests of the United States. Their nuts were an important source of nourishment for wildlife, native and colonial human populations, and the livestock these people raised. A single mature chestnut tree could rain an astonishing 250 lbs of nuts upon anyone waiting below to gather them, and by the 19th century, trains criss-crossed America carrying many tons of the sweet nuts to locations beyond the tree’s natural reach. Kitchens across the country served chestnut-based soups, stews, breads, and other baked goods through winter, and the nut became intertwined with festive wintertime traditions. Chestnut lumber, being a rot-resistant hardwood, was no less valuable than the nuts the trees bore. It was a preferred building material for log cabins and more refined structures alike, and its tensile strength and durability saw it used to produce the same railway ties that carried the trains distributing the tree’s own nuts. Sadly, in the early 20th century, a fungal blight introduced by an Asian chestnut that was planted in Brooklyn steadily spread across the entire American chestnut growing region. In a few short years 40 billion trees were decimated, and the thriving chestnut economy was brought to a halt.

As child in Hong Kong, I grew up eating the nuts of the same Asian variety of chestnut that carried that blight to America. Like European varieties, Asian chestnuts are immune to the blight they can carry, and there, they had remained an easily sourced seasonal food. In Hong Kong, the appearance of chestnuts each year tolled the beginning of another sub-tropical winter because as soon as the temperature dropped, vendors roasting chestnuts in enormous vats of beaded charcoal appeared on street corners throughout the city. Even as a child, I understood that the cuisine of Hong Kong was made vibrant by the marriage of cultures mingling in the region, and by the availability of a multitude of exotic ingredients. All over the city, in restaurants as well as at make-shift cooking stations set up in 50

laneways, perspiring cooks stood over huge black woks, throwing this and that into a complex swirl of meats, vegetables, noodles. But the men who roast chestnuts were different. Their task was not to create any harmonious blend of flavors, but to stand and shepherd flame and steam that coaxed the flavors already lying within those shiny brown shells to maximum intensity. The chestnut men’s sinewy arms were angular even beneath their woolen shirts and they stirred purposefully—burying and revealing and burying nuts nestled within an undulating blackness. You could smell it all from two blocks away. My father was an airline pilot, so we travelled extensively. I’d eaten little golden cakes with chestnut centers in Japan, and had greedily enjoyed the sticky vanilla luxury of candied chestnuts in France. But these men, with cheeks ruddy from smoke and heat, offered simple, unadulterated nature.

In harmony with the seasons, they roasted and hawked their product, and their calls reminded you another year had almost passed. They seemed, to me, almost holy.

I live in the United States now, in the same region where native chestnuts once thrived and then disappeared. The vast majority of chestnuts that appear in grocery stores in the fall are now imported, but I’ve learnt that this might not always be the case.

Organizations like the American Chestnut Foundation are working hard to breed new varieties of blightresistant native chestnut, and a handful of farmers are already producing nuts from these new varieties.

When I read of this, it led me to instate a new tradition: Every year, around Thanksgiving, when I buy a few little sacks of chestnuts to peel and store in the freezer, I’ll also make a small donation to the ACF to support their efforts.

My stash of frozen chestnuts becomes a variety of savory and sweet dishes through winter and into spring, but the one I make most frequently, happens to also be the most simple—a Chinese-style chestnut dessert soup. Clear, sweet Chinese dessert soups are

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made with seeds, nuts or dried fruits, and are typically served at the end of a meal to cleanse the palette and aid digestion. In Chinese medicine, chestnuts are considered to be a stomach and spleen tonic, to aid circulation, and to lower blood pressure. I enjoy them only because they are delicious. Untraditionally, I like to flavor my chestnut soup with vanilla, which I think complements their earthy sweetness, and if there are store-bought chestnut-filled mochi balls lurking in my freezer, I’ll cook those separately and drop one each into the steaming bowls before serving.

chestnut dessert soup

To Prepare Your Chestnuts

Place the chestnuts and water in a small saucepan, then bring to a steady simmer over medium heat. Reduce heat to low and simmer very gently for 20 minutes.

The chestnuts should be soft, but still hold their shape.

After this time, the liquid should have reduced by about a quarter, but depending on the size of your saucepan, may have reduced more. Add a little more water if it seems necessary. Add the sugar and vanilla, stir gently until dissolved, and serve hot in four small bowls. If you have cooked mochi balls, add them to each bowl before serving. Alternatively, chill the soup in the refrigerator and serve cold the next day.

I like to prepare 2 lbs at a time for freezing, but it’s quite a task, so if you don’t have an hour or two to spare, just prepare enough for a single dish. Wash and drain the chestnuts, then make a vertical slash on each one, on its flatter side, with a chestnut knife or other sturdy blade. Place the nuts in a saucepan large enough to hold them along with cold water to cover by an inch, bring to the boil, then simmer for 10 minutes. Allow the chestnuts to cool in the saucepan until they are cool enough to handle, then remove one at a time to peel.

It is important to leave them submerged until you are ready to peel them, so that the shells don’t shrink and make the task more difficult than it needs to be. When lifted straight from the warm water, the shells should peel off easily and beneath, you’ll find a papery skin.

Carefully peel this skin off too, then transfer the peeled nuts to a freezer-safe container to store in the freezer.

Once frozen, chestnuts will keep up to six months.

serves 4 1 cup peeled chestnuts (either defrosted or frozen) 3 cups filtered water

2 tablespoons raw sugar, or more to taste 1/2 teaspoon vanilla paste or extract

4 cooked chestnut-filled mochi balls (optional)

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mignardise

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Call for Submissions: Love Letters Juliet, the restaurant, was founded as a love letter to “all of our favorite things.” of Juliet, the magazine was created out of a desire to tell you everything we had to tell you about those things.

Or, it was started as a love letter to YOU. For Valentine’s Day we published this super secret map to find the (or really, one of the) ancient relic of the Saint himself. Katrina and Josh discovered the head of Saint Valentine while on assignment in Rome, researching one of the newest dinner menu productions for the restaurant, A Roman Holiday…which now plays during select winters, and wraps up around Valentine’s Day when it does.

This map was shared in secret with guests of the restaurant the few days before and after Valentine’s Day 2020, in hopes they might be inspired to retrace our steps…either physically, back to the ancient skull hidden in plain sight in the Eternal City…or someone more symbolically might be inspired to the pen and paper, to record their own love letter, by chance, and if so, to share it, with us all.

Write a love letter and share it with us. it could be to anyone; share it with us. it could be to anyone – your partner, a community, the clerk at the grocery store.

Or no one at all, but some thing that we should all know your reverence for. We’d love to get them all to then share with our community, in a future issue of the magazine.

So then, of Juliet reader, draft your love and send it to us in an email, info @ julietandcompany.net.

Or if you prefer snail mail, send it to 257 Washington Street, Somerville, MA 02143. We wonder how many postmarks might read Rome? But no matter, we look forward to them from wherever they come.

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Also by Prospect Tower Observation available wherever Juliet + Company goods are sold our market season a cookbook(let) guiding you through a full season of New England farmers market shopping and cooking, plus some light professional level cooking training along the way of Juliet, the Magazine not a food magazine, not really and a little piece of something bigger in association with of Juliet MediaVerse the Magazine is released seasonally, in print and online. free online, but better in print, of Juliet, the Magazine can be found at ofJuliet.com and supported at patreon.com/ofJuliet Bean Zine: Cooking in the Time of Corona volume 1: Josh + Will volume 2: Rachael + Megan volume 3: Noah + Matthew

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and on Instagram: @JulietUnionSQ  @Peregrine_Boston  @of Juliet_MediaVerse

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